What Apps Should You Download Before Visiting Nashville?

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Before a Nashville trip, download a rideshare app (Uber or Lyft, or both), WeGo’s QuickTicket app if you might ride the bus, a parking payment app if you are bringing a car, and the ticketing apps for any show you plan to see. Add a weather alert app if you are traveling in spring or summer. Everything else, from restaurant reservations to maps, you probably already have.

Getting Around

  • Uber and Lyft. Both serve Nashville, including pickups at the airport’s Ground Transportation Center, where the ride-app pickup areas are signed by zone (Vanderbilt’s BNA arrival guide). Having both lets you compare prices at busy times.
  • QuickTicket by WeGo. WeGo’s fare app. Paying with QuickTicket or a contactless card makes each $2 fare a two-hour pass and caps what you pay at $4 a day and $65 a month (WeGo fares). The same fare covers the Route 18 airport bus. How the system works is in how the WeGo bus system works.

If You Bring a Car

Metro Nashville’s on-street parking uses pay stations and pay-by-phone, and you must enter your correct license plate number at the kiosk or on your phone to avoid a ticket, according to WSMV’s report on the April 2025 parking changes. ParkMobile’s Nashville page describes the pay-by-phone option and says you use the zone number posted on nearby signs (ParkMobile). Install the app before you arrive so you are not setting up an account at the curb.

Two rules from the same WSMV report are worth knowing before you park: meters in the Central Parking District downtown are enforced 24 hours a day, every day, while other metered areas such as Midtown, Edgehill, and Hillsboro Village are enforced from 6 a.m. to midnight. The full set of rules is in the parking rules in Nashville.

Shows and Tickets

Buy tickets only through each venue’s official site or its official ticketing partner. The Bluebird Cafe, for example, warns on its homepage about fraudulent tickets sold on resale sites and says its tickets are powered by Ticketmaster (Bluebird Cafe). Keep confirmation emails or mobile tickets ready before you arrive at the Ryman, the Opry, or a songwriter room.

Weather Alerts

Middle Tennessee gets severe storms and tornadoes, so turn on emergency alerts on your phone or install a weather app with push alerts for your trip. The National Weather Service’s tornado guidance is to go to a basement, safe room, or interior room away from windows when a warning is issued (NWS).

What You Can Skip

You do not need a dedicated “Nashville guide” app. A map app, your reservation app of choice, and the official sites for the venues you care about cover nearly everything. For a short list of what to plan before the trip, see what to avoid doing in Nashville.

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